Dynamic Cardiomyoplasty

pp 323-330

Abstract

Several cardiac diseases has a common outcome: cardiac failure. Each year 200 new cases per million people of dylated cardiomyopathy are diagnosed.In our country, cardiomyopathies secondary to coronary ailment or Chagas disease have also a high incidence. Heart transplant has good results in those patients with advanced stages of the disease, but has many drawbacks mainly because of the scarce number of donors, medical and psychosocial contraindications and the adverse effects of immuno supressive therapy. Skeletal muscle grafts, paced in synchrony with the heart beat, have been studied as an aid to myocardial contraction. This procedure, known as cardiomyoplasty, was clinically first employed in 1985 by Carpentier and Chachques in a patients with a large tumor in his left ventricle. The indications of this procedure are the same as those employed for heart transplants and include mainly patients with a one year-high mortality risk. The main aim is to improve the contractility of heart chambers.